922,320 Pull Tabs Later, A Math Lesson Adds Up

BARKHAMSTED — Kathy Loomis can hardly turn around without finding a plastic bag or boxful of aluminum-can pull tabs nearby.

They're crammed in her mailbox, newspaper tube, and piled on her desk at work. Strangers, friends and church groups alike drop the tabs off for her.

But most of the tabs come from her fourth- grade students who are trying to finish off a class math project that previous students started six years ago. The plan then, as it is now, is to collect the tabs in order to see first hand just how big one million really is.

Students, and in many cases their entire families, have been collecting the small tabs for six years and are now closing in on the one- million mark, according to estimates conducted this week.

So far, students have collected an estimated 922,320 tabs, enough to fill eight 32-gallon trash containers.

``We're almost there; I didn't think we had that many,'' said Loomis, moments after her students finished their estimations.

Loomis is using the tab collection to make math more fun for her students.

``This way it's not some abstract number, they can see it,'' said Loomis.

Estimating the total number of tabs collected was in itself a valuable math lesson for the class.

Students first determined the number of tabs that would fit in a paper cup and then formed a circular line to transfer the full container's contents, cup by cup, into an empty container.

Multiplying the average number of tabs that fit in a cup, 378, by the number of scoops in a container, 305, gave the students an estimate of how many tabs fit in one 32-gallon container. That number, 115,290, was then multiplied by eight, or the number of containers they have collected.

The tabs are also a fun way to learn other math concepts such as division and graphing, she said.

The goal of putting one million in perspective is apparently working. One student, from another class, recently wandered into Loomis' room to drop off some tabs he had collected for the project and, upon seeing the garbage can full of tabs, mistakenly assumed that the class had already reached the million mark.

``He said, `Oh, you've already reached a million,'' said Loomis. ``He was shocked when I told him there was only about 100,000 in there.''

The students have received help from a a variety of local and not-so-local people. A box of tabs recently arrived from two churches in Binghamton, N.Y., apparently the hometown of some student's grandparents or uncle, Loomis said.

The class hopes to reach one million by the end of the school year, and then sell the tabs for scrap at about 25 cents a pound. The National Kidney Foundation of Connecticut will get the money because the group was part of the original inspiration for the project. The teacher who started the collection, now retired, had heard the false rumor that the tabs helped dialysis patients, Loomis said. It's a rumor the Kidney Foundation has been battling for years.

As for Loomis, she is more than happy that she will soon need to find a new way to teach math.